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Sunday 7 December 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Braddon, Russell
(1921-1995) Australian author of biographies, many novels and some other work; he was actively interested in experiments on ESP. He was imprisoned by the Japanese in Changi, Singapore, during World War II. His first sf novel, The Year of the Angry Rabbit (1964), is sensitive – unsurprisingly in view of his nationality – about the threat posed by giant rabbits to civilization as we know it; by the end of the book, only a few Aborigines remain, ...
Rotsler, William
(1926-1997) US author and artist who received four Hugos as best fan artist, in 1975, 1979, 1996 and 1997, plus a 1996 Retro Hugo for his 1945 fan art; his huge output of cartoons, many still unpublished, may be remembered as much as his fiction. (An original Rotsler cartoon was tipped into each copy of the final issue of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly.) He began publishing sf with "Ship Me ...
Schneider, Robert
(1961- ) Austrian playwright and author whose first novel, Schlafes Bruder (1992; trans Shaun Whiteside as Brother of Sleep 1995), edges into sf-tinted Fantastika through the life of its protagonist, Jophannes Elias Alder, a nineteenth-century musical prodigy (see Music) whose precocious compositions are made possible through what might be described as a ...
Levinson, Leonard
(1935- ) US author of sf novels under other names: contributions to the Butler series of Sex-charged Technothrillers beginning with Killer Satellites (1980) under the House Name Philip Kirk; and The Camp (1977) as by Jonathan Trask. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...